Cleveland Clinic Twinsburg Finds Aneurysm Just in Time

It was March 31, one day too early for an April Fools’ joke. Still, Stow resident Jonathan Williams thought his wife was pranking him.

Jonathan was having a routine echocardiogram at Cleveland Clinic’s Twinsburg Family Health and Surgery Center, where his wife, Carrie, is a financial counselor. He’d been born with a heart murmur but never had heart problems. But then, cardiac sonographer Derek Lautzenhiser saw something startling.

“The test seemed to be taking a long time,” says Jonathan. “Derek kept looking at me and asking questions like, ‘Are you short of breath?’ and ‘Do you ever have chest pain?’ And I’m like, ‘No, I’m fine.’ When he finished, he said I should come with him to the emergency room. He said I had a type A aortic dissection — something very serious that needed to be fixed right away. I didn’t believe him at first. I thought it was just my wife messing with me and she’d walk around the corner any minute.”

Derek told Jonathan to call his wife and then escorted him through the building to the Emergency Department. That’s where physician Jonathan Keary, MD, and physician assistant Dale Turley, PA-C, took over. A CT scan confirmed a critical need for heart surgery, and fast.

Layers of Jonathan’s aorta, the big artery that carries blood from the heart to the rest of the body, were tearing away from each other. Blood was seeping between the layers, causing the area to bulge — an aneurysm. A rupture could be fatal.

While aortic dissections typically cause severe chest or upper back pain, sometimes there are no symptoms. That was the case with Jonathan, who had always been active outdoors — golfing, swimming, roughhousing with his two kids — not to mention performing in a rock band on weekends.

“His helicopter ride was seven minutes. My car ride was 45,” she recalls. “Everything was a whirlwind. There were so many questions going through my mind, but I knew Jonathan was in good hands. I’m so glad that Twinsburg has the helipad to get people where they need to be right away.”

“I could tell it was pretty serious because they told me not to get out of bed,” says Jonathan. “About 15 minutes later, members of the helicopter flight team walked in and said, ‘Hey, you’re going for a ride to main campus.’ It all happened so fast.”

Carrie, who had caught up with her husband in the Emergency Department, left for main campus at the same time that Cleveland Clinic Critical Care Transport took off from Cleveland Clinic Twinsburg’s helipad with Jonathan aboard.

“His helicopter ride was seven minutes. My car ride was 45,” she recalls. “Everything was a whirlwind. There were so many questions going through my mind, but I knew Jonathan was in good hands. I’m so glad that Twinsburg has the helipad to get people where they need to be right away.”

Upon arrival, Jonathan was wheeled out of the helicopter and into the middle of a waiting cardiac team, led by Jose Navia, MD, a Cleveland Clinic cardiac surgeon. A day later, he was resting soundly in the Cardiac Care Unit (CCU) with a repaired aorta and a new heart valve.

“The surgery took about eight hours,” says Carrie. “When Dr. Navia was done, he came out to tell us that everything had gone beautifully. I hugged him so hard. I was just so happy that there are people like him that do this type of thing.”

Jonathan spent two days in the CCU, mostly sleeping, and four days in a step-down unit before returning home. The hardest part was not being able to take a deep breath, he says, touting his lung capacity as a singer. But he was touched by the genuine compassion of his caregivers. Derek came from Twinsburg to visit him in the CCU, and CCU nurses stopped by to visit him in the step-down unit.

Today, Jonathan is back to his regular routine. He encourages others to get checkups even if they feel fine. Carrie continues to praise the Cleveland Clinic caregivers who saved her husband’s life just by doing their jobs.

“He truly received world-class care, even with such a limited amount of time,” she says.